Irving official walks a fine line on Texas Stadium's implosion

Irving's hope that the pending destruction of Texas Stadium
becomes an American spectacle - complete with a corporate sponsor
and national contest - rests on Maura Gast.

But the Irving Convention and Visitor Bureau's executive
director has a fine line to walk, a secret to guard and an
unforgiving timeline.

A major food company wants to sponsor the event and turn the
right to push the detonator into a nationwide contest. But the
company doesn't want the world to know who it is unless a deal is
struck.

City Council members want a pact to bring the city the biggest
financial and advertising bang possible. But while the city owns
the structure, the Dallas Cowboys retain near-total control of the
use of Texas Stadium's name.

That leaves Gast with the task of selling her bosses and
America's Team on plans without spilling the beans on who is behind
them.

"I'm the only one who knows who it is," she said last week. "I'm
the keeper of the flame."

If those conditions weren't constricting enough, a deal has to
be struck soon.

Gast said the company, represented by Hunter Public Relations,
can change its already-planned advertising campaign for 2010 to
incorporate the proposed contest. But the company would have to
make those changes in the next few weeks. Otherwise, the hoped-for
campaign won't have enough time to get marketplace exposure before
the implosion in late February or early March.

"Those are really critical issues to work through fairly
quickly," Gast said.

Gast said the company doesn't want any competitors to know of
its likely advertising theme for next year, thus the secrecy.
Despite keeping things mum, Gast gained ground in getting council
support last week. Officials gave her the green light to start
negotiating with Hunter, whose clients include Kraft Foods and
Kellogg's, in hopes that something can be put together soon.

But timing and secrecy aren't the only things with which to
contend.

The city has to work out a filming permit process to handle the
attention from a host of cable-television film crews.

"There's at least five different series about demolition - the
science of demolition, blowing stuff up, people who blow stuff up
for a living," Gast said. "So there's a lot of interest."

And then there are the logistics of putting together an
implosion-day event. The city plans to invite just about any and
everyone who has ever been associated with the stadium. That
includes players, politicians and even decades worth of
sportswriters.

"They were so much a part of Irving and putting the stadium on
the map," Gast said.

Of course, picking a spot to put people to witness the event is
even proving to be a challenge. The Texas Department of
Transportation is renting the stadium site from the city as it
reconstructs the interchange of highways that surround the
stadium.

"The site, as it is today when you look at it as a whole, is not
how it's going to look in three months," Gast said.

Cowboys spokesman Rich Dalrymple said he wasn't sure where the
city and team are in the process of negotiating the use of the
stadium's name. But Irving officials say they're confident the team
will sign off.

"We have a cordial relationship and this is more or less just
one of the last steps," said Karen Brophy, a senior assistant city
attorney. "But certainly, we're sensitive to their needs and we
want to be sure that they approve whatever the result is."

Meanwhile, Gast is spending the final weeks of 2009 running back
and forth between the food company, the city and the Cowboys trying
to coordinate the capstone piece of the implosion event.

She said previous stadium implosions across the country have not
gained this level of interest. On the one hand, Gast said, such
attention is a testament to the stadium's status as an American
sports landmark. On the other, it presents coordination challenges
that have no precedent.

"There's not much of a good guidebook on media and marketing
management of iconic stadium implosions for dummies," she said.
"I've looked."

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